Derek Hudson
Appearances
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Sorry is a brutal game, and you've played it a hundred times, but... Why not another time? Oh, yeah.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
In your many years, you have only ever heard the sounds of each other, the sounds of this room. Except for the occasional rumble. something being dragged directly over the seal, perhaps, or the sound of something heavy thumping.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
It's very, very, very faint, and only happens when you have been silent for an extremely long period of time, during those sometimes weeks or months that go by when you don't say a word. You've just run out of things to do and say. You've told each other your life story. You've gone through every memory twice, three times over, and another decade, and another decade.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Soon, perhaps, a century has passed. What else are you doing in this space? How do you spend that much time?
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
At this point, you guys could roll yourself down to the clothing that she wore and the clothing he wore and what they both had to drink. Every pore on her body.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
This is not the time of Vjornir and Queenie and Barnabos and Scrim and Taishen. Centuries in the past, we go now. Millennia's, perhaps. We go back far, far, far into the past to the capital of the empire of the silver dragonborn. You've... flirted, and as a party, you guys certainly have come across the wastelands and the ruins of their structures.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Well, this would be fun. You sit down and you play a campaign together, and the story is long. For another hundred years, you play the campaign that you start to refer to fondly as Icebound.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
At this point, when you finish the story and tears are running down all over your face.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
As you conclude the story and you realize that you've saved the cosmos, everything is cool and fine, and your characters are off to perhaps their next adventure, and you're able to set it aside for all good stories come to an end.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
The third century. You hear a... thrum of magic, and you turn, and you see that the portal has activated. Swirling magic therein inside the perimeter of this massive circular gate explodes outwards, and peeking through, ahead, long ears, bald, except for, but a thin, what's the word I'm looking for? Like a top knot? Braided top knot. Does he have a banana yellow skin?
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
He has mottled banana yellow skin. Yeah. And he peeks in, only half of his body cutting through the magic. Looks around. And then he tears through the portal and it turns off.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Two millennia pass. Holy shit. And you spend the time however you would spend such time, occasionally getting into fights that seem to last forever, breaking everything, reassembling it, rereading everything, just... We fight to the death every day. Every day. Every day. That's your morning routine at this point.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
And suddenly, you see the runes, the droning illumination has changed for the first time, and you can't remember how long. You look up with your socketless eyes, and you... see that the runes of the seal have started to twist and change. You can see that original outline emerge, and it starts to lift up.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You're still able to lift here, even without any muscle. You're able to hold that greatsword. You've got your gauntlets on. You are still in the form of a strange werewhale, but you are ready to rock. You still have your crescent blade. Nice! And you are standing there, looking upwards with,
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
The occasional monolith with navigational symbols. incredible statues that had been destroyed, hiding these passages into the mountains, small towns, these evidences that trace back long ago. And you've even met the Druids, who considered themselves, in some ways, part of that same empire. But we go back now to tell this story, far, far, far back to the capital city of Argentholm.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
insane minds, impossible minds, minds that have been locked together for an unfathomable, unknowable amount of time. And it starts to move aside, and you see the opening start to crest like a moon wanes and waxes. And all of a sudden, in comes an avalanche of metal, coins, gold, and silver, and jewels, and copper pieces start to crash down.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
It starts like that, but only for a moment, until finally the opening is wider and wider and wider. Figures emerge, shadowed shapes. And that's where we'll call the night session.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
This has been... Just like Pearl already. Our second Tales from Icebound. A side-canon adventure.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
I can guarantee you, our next session, we will be picking right back up where we left off with the party.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
We will have the moment that we ended in the previous chapter, just after, for those of you who are caught up, you must be watching, so spoilers are fine, just after they were returned to southwestern Dakar on the icy sheets of the frozen ocean, and that is where we'll pick up and continue the adventure in real time. Thank you so much for listening to the Legends of Avengers podcast.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
the space, the center of this empire, of all of the amazing territory that they claimed. And they could claim almost all of Drakkar at the height of their empire. We join the Silver Dragonborn Empire in the final days of its reign. just before its collapse. Four, the four of you are climbing up a center mountain, a mountain just at the center of this capital city.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
It is itself surrounded by a lake, joined by two bridges that stretch out to either side. There are mountains on one side, a great forest to another, and a massive castle that rings this mountain. But you are headed towards its peak, for you, Our sworn Kingsguard, for lack of a better word. Empire, Emperor Guard. He is off trying to rally the troops to try and stop what siege is happening.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
But you know to meet him at the top, for he has a special and sacred duty for the four of you. Looking around from your vantage point as you are just ascending towards the peak of this mountain, you can see the devastation of this siege. There is no army sieging this city, not even a handful of monsters, creatures, just one.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You are looking out and you can see a great white dragon, an ice dragon that has been terrorizing and killing the people, the families, the clans, the tribes that you all have known and loved your entire life, but so relentless, her onslaught, so devastating, her attacks.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
and so powerful, her magics and strength, there's been nothing to stop her, and it seems that Argentholm will fall, perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow. You look across the frozen ice of the lake, you look towards the towns, and you can see her landing and crushing, tearing up whole rooftops. You can see spears and magics attempting to sway her, and she immediately swoops out of the distance.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You can see bodies being torn and thrown up. You can see her great breath as it crashes through the streets of this place that you've known and called home for so long, and you wonder. what it must feel like to be down there. You can only faintly hear the sounds of that group clash, those battles, those brethren and sisters on the wind, so far away and far up you are from your vantage point.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
It's now that you start to come to the crest of this mountain, and it's here that I need you to each tell us, who are you? What should we call you? A little bit about yourself, if you don't mind.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Just introduce yourself the way that you want to introduce your character. You do not have to reveal everything, nor do you have to. You could just go with name and a little something. However you want to introduce yourself, it's your choice.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Yes. You would have trained together. Gone to school together. You have fought together. You've gone to school together. Yeah. You have, you are intimately familiar with each other. You would call each other brothers. Okay. And the same is true for the emperor. This is not a... position that an emperor takes lightly. You also know that this is a younger emperor.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
His father was killed a year ago, and he ascended to the throne because of the initial attacks that the dragon brought. But for all the mysteries and strangeness and violence that she is bringing, that is where you find yourself as you continue to make your way up the snowy peaks of this mountain.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Guys, I think we need to be more professional now that I can't get started. No, no, get the fuck out of here.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Thank you, Mikey. Mace, tell us a little bit about your new character. My name is...
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
The whites are the character traits, and one of them is sort of what your brothers, your Kingsguard, know about you as like a more private or personal detail of your past, and another is an achievement, something that anyone in the Empire would effectively know of you, had they heard your name.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Yeah, you didn't take a single bite. You just dropped them in. They were all linked, too, right? So they just . I can't do this.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
I can see the hot dogs swimming down. Thank you, Mace. Rich, tell us who you'll be inhabiting tonight.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
One of the cards, I can't remember what color it was. One of them is something that you would know by being friends or having worked so closely with somebody. That's the yellow card. That's the yellow card. So the yellow card is what you're, like, and you don't have to reveal it. Yes, because green is our greatest achievement.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
And green is your achievement that, like, you would be known for around town.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Ooh, nice, gotta give it up. And 12. And 12 again. Okay, that's going to be... This isn't a name. That's not a name at all.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You are making the final steps up to the top of this mountain, and you know, part of the reason why the capital city of Argentholm was founded here many centuries ago, just as the empire, before it was an empire, before it was a kingdom, it was because of the rare materials that could be found at the bottom of this rock, so strangely placed at the center of this lake.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
And at the top of the mountain, after mining and working this area for so long, there is a massive platform, the top of a lift that can take you all the way down, down, down, beneath the castle keep, beneath the water, down into the beginning of what once was a massive mine shaft.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
There are many secrets of your empire can be found down there, but why you've been asked to come to the top of the mountain, you are not totally sure, and that is what you are doing as you begin to crest the top of the mountain. What happens next is up to you.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You can hear the screams of the other dragonborn well across the lake, as far off as you can hear you crashing, breaking timber, ceramics.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
It is a beautiful view. From this vantage point, you can see in all 360 directions. You can see the two massive bridges that lead, one of them leading directly into the mountain that faces you.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Welcome to Legends of Avantris. I'm Derek Hudson and you're listening to Icebound. Before we dive into tonight's session, we're going to have to... figure out who we are in this new story in the Tales of Icebound. And to begin, you'll each need to take one of these character sheets and pass them down. Is it random? They're all identical. These are templates. We're going to modify them.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You can see the other one that reaches the shoreline on the other side of the lake, exactly the opposite side, going down into what is a robust and huge city filled with thousands and thousands of your brothers and sisters, your mothers and your fathers.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
There are certainly guardsmen similar to yourself who are in the castle still. There are many of the military forces that have been forced to draw back. Most of them are at the perimeter now and are endeavoring to slay the dragon or at least drive her off. But of course, you are, from this vantage point, seeing no progress is being made. But it is just the four of you alone.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You do not. This is one of the mysteries that has plagued the Emperor, plagued all of your people, is that aside from showing up with strange and terrible vengeance and violence, nothing seems to be known about where this dragon came from or what caused it to emerge in the first place.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Okay. Do we need to reroll on that thing? Not at this time. Oh. Instead, I'm giving you each a new task as I finish up your name.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
As you're talking there, solemn, courageous, brave, the four of you ready for whatever orders may come. You do see just there up above the flying emperor, but he is dipping. not soaring the way majestically you've known him to come, his wings being a benefit, a trait of his noble blood.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
He is instead coming in a little too hot, a little too fast, and he barely manages to land, holding himself clearly devastatingly wounded, rushing up to you. Men, brothers!
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You have a question? Is he a giant dragon? No, no, no, no. This is another silver dragon born, but he does have wings that work.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You can decide if you have a nickname or some other name. If you have a nickname or if you go by a shortened name or modify it how you want, but those are your given names, let's say. Now, on the two white index cards that I gave each of you. Oh, two white index cards. I gave you two white index cards. I lost mine. Okay. I don't have extras, Mace.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Before you race over and you start to move goods off of the lift, move goods off of this wooden platform and start to basically prepare it for descent, you know that there's a single lever.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
that, when pulled, will essentially counterbalance the weights being what they are, allow it to tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, start to make its way down through the cave, through the mineshaft mouth at the top of this mountain, and you are readying, and then you hear a exclamation, a scream from the emperor. She's here!
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
And you turn and you realize that the Princess of Wrath has closed the distance almost instantaneously. And this massive dragon, a younger dragon than the ones that you know from the Icebound Tale, certainly, but perhaps even more ferocious for the liveliness that she brings to the table. Huge wings swing down and swoop down as she lands on the top of this mountain and confronts the Emperor.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
The voice that comes out... No, you're just shocked. I'm into it. Oh, okay. The voice that comes out bellows, and it explodes across the mountaintop, almost piercing your eardrums. You're shocked by the great sound. And because I haven't given the emperor a name yet... Pee-poopy?
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
No, you guys are going to make fun of that, hold on.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
I will not rest until every one of you is dead. And she lurches back and goes in with a giant chomp. And all of a sudden, you see Gregorovitch's right arm immediately disappear.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Okay. Write a character trait on one and write a character trait on the other. These can be any kind of personality trait. What does that mean? Something like prissy or patient or... So the archetypes from Animal Crossing.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
The lift is flying down. You can see the walls of this, for lack of a better word, like rocky interior cliff or cave as you fly down are flying past you and the chain, tick, tick, tick, tick, is racing on one side where it would both control the ascent and the descent to pull up and pull down.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
There's also the connection that goes directly up to essentially a crane arm that is holding onto and releasing, but there's nothing stopping it. There's no friction. There's no brakes, right? So you're just in free-fall at this point.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You endeavor to handle signs into one of the quickly moving holes of this chain to see if you can both get in through the hole and perhaps stab it against the wall and perhaps cause some sort of a, it's gonna be challenging to get this done, but go ahead and make an athletics check to see if you perform well. Let's see, folks.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Oh, and I neglected to tell you, when you each introduced, you all have one inspiration.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Any kind of attribute or feature. Jock. Jock would be a good one, sure.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Just manifest! Ladle jumps in, and immediately he threads the needle of one of these chains, and before he's even lifted up, you are amazed to find that it makes its way into a crack, a fissure on the other side of the wall, and it immediately starts to create the friction. You can see the ladle almost
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
bend in the tremendous amount of weight that it would need to stop the lift that you are all on, and the end of it starts to sizzle and turn red from the friction, the heat being what it is, but you are starting to slow down, and it seems that with a 26, you have time to think as you are coming to a much slower pace now.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
With a 14, you can see that he is in dire need of medical attention. He's losing blood quickly. He's holding that arm. But what once was a powerful man has been through a number of battles. He's been deteriorated and waging this war against this singular predator. And he is looking up at you. You can already see the flushness from his silver dragon-born face. Gregorovitch? Just call him Greg.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Greg does not seem to be long for this world at his current pace.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Just write it large on one card.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Do what you need to do. And he bites down and make another medicine check to see how well you've staunched the bleeding.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
With a 19, you cinch it forward and you hear a bit of a... choked scream from the Emperor, knowing how hard you have to tug a tourniquet in order to actually stop blood phobia and what it is, and with the fabrics there, the bleeding is no longer the geyser that it once was. You've stemmed it. Thank you.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
That's some good shit, right? Thank you, Artie. It's just what I needed. That's right. He turns and he hops off of the lift. He jumps. There's a space between all sides of this platform that you find yourself off. And with his wings still intact and well enough to fly, especially with this rejuvenation, he dives down to beat the lift to the bottom.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
And the four of you for but a moment are alone on the surface of this platform.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You keep the lift slow, and the chains stop moving up quite as quickly. You feel that you can pull your ladle free, and you do. It's slightly warped at the end from the amount of friction, but it may still work as a weapon. We saved the day, folks! And clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, another few hundred feet down, you come to a rest at the bottom.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Surrounding you is this massive cavern opening, and a huge amount of mining equipment being amassed. You can see almost like a railway network in all directions, but there at the lever end is the... Emperor, holding his arm, his wings furling back behind him, and he has managed to pull the lever, apply the brakes, saving you from a nasty fall. Are you all right, men?
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
If that dragon were to plunder those treasures, it would mean more than the loss of our empire. It would mean her gaining access to worlds beyond these, to impossible magics. It is crucial that she cannot discover this trove.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
And it swings to the side like a giant coin on its back and unveils this huge crypt just underneath. We'll need to get down there and seal ourselves inside so that we might defend...
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Yeah, anything that you consider to be the trait of a character that defines their personality, that helps, like it might be almost like a role play prompt, right? Something that motivates you or is, you know, you could be aggressive or you could be timid or you could be...
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Follow me, men. And he dives down, and he swoops and hovers and circles down, and you can see that you are but a 50-foot climb down into this hole as you're being bidden by orders to join you.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You throw some ropes down, and you're able to easily rappel down into this space, pulling the ropes down and clutch them over you. You see he waves his hand once again, and There's a bit of filth and rocks as this giant seal forms over the space and sinks inwards. And then with another difficult wave of his hand as he's running out of energy, running out of magic, he seals the tomb completely.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
No. No, we don't have to wait. What? The nature of that seal being what it is.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Wait, hold on, we're going to be stuck down here for how long? He starts to respond to you and he says, yes!
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
uh, ambitious, or you could be jaded, or you could be, you know, there are lots and lots of traits, and I'm comfortable with you pulling out a phone and Googling it. This is, uh, this is where the fun begins, as they say in pod racing. Different movies.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
It tastes like if you somehow took all of the salmon skin off of a salmon and combined it with like a jelly.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Looking around, you can see that the ceiling has been completely sealed. There are ensconces on the wall, providing a dark illumination. Just enough, almost enough like a torch, but it doesn't flicker. It's just sort of a consistent droning color. And looking around, now that your eyes are starting to adjust to the light,
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You can see that there are many of the most treasured royal family treasures here in the bottom. There are great vases and works of art, beautiful artisanal craft, heirlooms and armor and weapons, everything that someone would need to go on in the afterlife. And this is how the emperor's planned it, because there is indeed an open tomb to rest him in.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
And you can also see that there are four spots for guardians who have sworn themselves to forever serve the emperors and fulfill their oath and duty.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
It's similar to the Egyptian analog that I'm going to make right now, because I'm using my imagination. There are just non-perishable goods. There are casks of wine. There are... Well, you can make an investigation check.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
16. With a 16, you immediately start looking through all of these goods, and there are so many objects of desire here, objects of power, that you, it takes a little time. You think, though, using your mind's eye, where would I put the drugs? And then opening a drawer, you do indeed find a little tiny box, just a small, made of gemstone, beautiful marbled surface like it is, and opening it,
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
you find inside that it is silver dust of only the highest purity. It's like Pulp Fiction.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Okay, let me know when everyone- give me a thumbs up when you're ready. Oh. Mikey's ready. I'm almost ready. Mace, are you, uh- I'm ready. On your way, or are you ready? I'm googling character traits.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
When he comes back, both of them, even though you are silver, it looks like someone's taken a silver spray can to your face.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You immediately enjoy the benefits of however that drug fucking works, and you feel amped up. You feel like you need something again right away.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
On one side, there is a... adorned area with an actual tomb area, and you can see that the great heavy seal that you can put on top would be there as well. What's the word that I'm looking for? The coffin's not right.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
But- but just hold on to your- Alright. Your various ta-tas. This is hard, teacher. It is hard. It is hard.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
The emperor swore you to this duty, to follow his orders. And even though he died, the sacred duty and his words are what is in the forefront of your minds as you lay him to rest in the sarcophagi and begin to pull the heavy stone.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Can I reveal my name? Sir Latable. Probably not yet. Oh. You can if you want to.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
I do not see his agony. Additionally, don't name yourself. Do nothing until I tell you to. Pass those over to Rich.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Okay, I'll write mine. There are very few rules to this except the rules that I make up. Okay, understood.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You get down into a squat and you jump up and you go- Come on, Lazy, I know you can do it! However jumping works moves. You don't even get close to 100 feet though, obviously.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Yeah, they're open sarcophagi, and they're at an angle, so you can lean back, putting your weapon to your side, and knowing that at any moment, If you should take this potion, you would enter a slumber to reawaken and protect the secrets of this empire. Not knowing if that might be... It might be days from now, you might wake up to happy news. To somebody saying, hey, we defeated the dragon.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
We're free, and we are here to rebuild. Or... how far flung into the future. It could be centuries, millennia before someone plunders the secrets of this space for how well hidden it was. What are you thinking as you ingest the potion and begin to go dark?
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
And you enter rest. Darkness. Quiet. You do not dream. Potion puts you into a place between life and death. Still, there's no real feeling of awareness of time, just prolonged, like when you're between dreams even, prolonged repose. You just swim through until suddenly, there is a stirring. Suddenly, you feel yourselves flooding back into life.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
All right. I think I got a thumbs up from Rich. You ready? You ready? You ready? We're all ready? Okay. Pass one character trait to your left and pass one to your right.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You suddenly wake up in your sarcophagi, and you know that the only reason your eyes may be blinking, that your muscles may be unstiffening, that you suddenly are capable of movement again, of action, your weapon's still there at your side, is because there is a threat. Some intruder has entered this crypt, for lack of a better word, and the four of you spring into action.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Half of a potion was enough. I want you each to tell me, describe in what badass way do you emerge from your guardian sarcophagi and take on the coming challenge to defend the Empire, defend its great knowledge, its great magics, its treasures?
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You say that. You jump down and into the center pit area. Who wants to go next?
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You ninja-guide against the wall and do a flip before landing down, readying your crescent blade. attack weapon.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Yeah, yeah, yeah, one of those. You land, like so, and you start to look around. Artie, ladle.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Okay, okay, you step forward. You take your rare whale form. As you land forward, you see all of this blubber suddenly emerge and cover Ladle, and he steps forward. You can see his massive maw ready for chomping.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
That's not what whales do. Arty, how do you emerge in this crackling moment?
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You look around, you see your brother's eyes, and each of you also look into each other's, and you see that your eyes are now aglow with this unbelievable blue light. that seems to trace and turn as you all look around. Looking up, the seal above you appears to be unbroken, untarnished, and you suddenly look over to where the emperor's sarcophagus was.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Oh, damn it. All right, now you have another index card, a yellow index card. On this, you need to write a secret. Something that someone else will know about you. And I'm going to tell you right now that we're going back far. This isn't the current modern day of Icebound. We're going centuries, millennia ago. You will all be playing Silver Dragonborn in the empire that once was Andrakar.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
They turn and hiss, and one of them goes and launches at you. That's it? Getting a natural one as you kick its face in, but you can tell all the others coveting the meal that is your potential daddy.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
The three of you all are also there standing, racing up, seeing the sight as Masara engages them for the first time. What do you all do?
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
It gives you the ability to kill it in one, it gives you a how do you want to do this.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Everything tastes like Muktuk in this form, and you are pleased. Exactly right. You are pleased by it, and its feet continue to run in the air, even though it's missing the top half of its body, and you go in for another one. Laziness, what are you doing?
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Oh, 20. Oh, 20 hits. And I'll say that you are able to, with your crescent blade, swing in and not just three, not just four, but five of these giant rats fly back as you split right across the top of them, making you think sort of like a hot dog as they splatter against the wall and fly to the ground.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Artie, now that you are pumped up and you are the last to get to reach the conflict, you see that there are rats in all directions. Masara being what? You still have your gauntlets on.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
17. 17. 17, that hits. You are able to squish one fist first into the ground. It splatters out. You're able to squish another one. It splatters out. It looks like there's only a couple left. Massara, what do you do? I am still...
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Wasn't meant to be, you stab forward.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Tears covering your glowing blue eyes being what it is. You aren't quite able to manage and you accidentally nick the body of potentially your father. As one of the rest dives out of the way at the last second.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
I'm so sorry! Echoes and reverberates inside of the chamber, and the final rat is able to scurry over to one of the corners, go up the wall, and into a tiny, tiny little hole, which seems to be from where all of these rats were able to dig through and emerge in the first place. And you are left alone. Yeah, yeah.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
I need you both, as you move the body, to make perception checks.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You don't notice it right away. You're busy writing the sarcophagus, laying the body down to rest. You especially, Maserar, are trying as best you can to make sure that he's whole and pristine. And you're laying the arms back into their positions. You're smoothing out the robes that were covered on by the blood. I have giant flipper hands. I am not being aggressive. are not helping.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You will be part of the Royal Guard. So that gives you a little bit of context as to who you are, but you've lived a whole life. You've had families, you've had, what is something that your brothers would know about you?
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
But when you both are able to step back for a moment, this is, he's still juicy. He's still decomposing. Almost no time at all has passed.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Millennia. You look at your bodies, and you are all very whole, dragonborn. Your eyes still glow with this magical energy, but you've barely changed. Has a week passed? A couple weeks, maybe? Enough for a fresh corpse to attract the smell of rats? It couldn't be more than a few months.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You look and you remember that you brought the gauntlets without the watch attachment. Oh.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You did have a sundial. It's beautiful. Made of silver.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
And you don't know how to turn it off. And, I mean, exactly. Two minutes. You are not changing back.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
It's about 90 feet up, and it's the size of a basketball hoop.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
I wouldn't say it's a secret. It's something that your brothers would know, but maybe not everyone would know.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're able to get underneath him and... Okay, go low! This is oddly clammy on my ass cheeks. Shot put in upwards on Mickey Athletics. And you push off of him, so make an Athletics check at advantage.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Wait, we are the Kingsguard? You are the Kingsguard. Well, the Emperor's Guard in this case, since it's an empire.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
That's very funny. I would say that you actually feel like the speed is incredible. You put all of your energy into it to Superman forward. You put all of your energy into it and push it out as much as possible. For the first fraction of a second, you feel like you are moving so fast, there's no way that you couldn't make it.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You make about halfway before you hit into the corner and slide down, tumbling into a treasure chest. Ow. That hurts.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
29. This time, you're standing directly underneath the hole, and you just shot put him straight upward. You, course correct, are able to push off just a little bit, and you get 80 feet up before.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You start to look around to find, well, there's the ropes that you rappelled down with, and there's what is a very nice candelabra that you think that you can just bend into the right configuration, and you start working the metal and making it, you're doing it very fast and with great focused attention given your state at this time, and
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Mathurer, you make it up and suddenly you realize you're scraping against the wall before you fall down and you land, the only reason you don't take damage, on top of Ladle. And the two of you collapse.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Yellow. Just make up a background detail, and it doesn't have to be huge, it doesn't have to be major, just something that perhaps a... Yeah, something that only someone who knows you would know.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
19. You whip it forward, and you all watch as it sails forward, the rope being pulled right along with it, and it goes into the mouth of the hole, and you... Give it just the right tug. Give it a yank. And it spiral and it hooks. It hooks against the thing. You can pull it and it feels taut. You walk up to the wall and you start to test with your weight a little bit and it might hold, hell.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
All right, I invented a grappling hook.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You don't even need to make a check. You're an experienced warrior, one of the best warriors of the empire, a Kingsguard, and you are able to rappel up the walls. hand over hand, you feel the strength in your body. There's been almost no deterioration, another sign of how little time has passed since your awakening.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
And you make it all the way up to the hole in the wall, and holding on to just a few feet into the hole, you can see that you were very lucky. The makeshift candelabra hook managed to just wedge itself on a beam that had been made on the side of this wall, just behind this sort of like fresco-like material. And you might be able to squeeze through there.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Let me know when everyone's ready. Give me the thumbs up, thumbs up. Mikey's almost done. Andy's still working. Thanks for watching the Derek creation process. There are lots of one-page RPGs that do this.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
It's going to be tight, but you feel pretty confident.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
around my waist. Okay, you're holding yourself down there with one arm and so you get a slack of the rope and you work it over and around, you roll a few times, you're able to even pull it through and sort of make a classic knot out of it. You feel pretty secure around the waist.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You pull yourself in, and you have to reach forward like this in order to get that initial pull, but as you do, there's a strange tingling sensation in the end of your fingertips, and that, it feels like pins and needles.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
And then you pull yourself in a little bit further, another six inches, 10 inches, and you feel that, it's getting stronger, and your whole hands, all the way up to your elbows, now completely numb. you are making progress, making through this tiny hole, and you think that maybe it's just because of your lithe nature and your frame being what it is. Not the blood and fat, it's not helping at all.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You're squeezing in through this stony space. As soon as you cross a certain threshold, it lights out. Whatever magic sustains you and holds you to this tomb suddenly drops, and you lose consciousness.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
And the three of you looking up just see the legs dangling out of the holes.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Yeah, he just very obviously goes limp.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You get yanked back and you watch as he swims around like this and then at the waist, not backwards, but forwards, hooks down and swings unconscious there at the end of the rope where he had hooked him, where he had tied himself about seven feet from the hole.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
It would be fairly obvious that Masaru is unconscious, given his limp and unspeaking quality.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
He's dangling about seven feet down from where the hole is, and the hook is holding him. He tied himself, so he's just swinging right there, and then there's the rest of the rope that is within reach to you.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You release it and you're aiming for the rope? Yes. Make an attack. So if I roll.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
18 hits and it's just enough for you to see as a small hole goes right through the center of this thick corded rope and all of a sudden it starts to unravel and you can see very quickly it's going to release and it's right at this moment that you come into consciousness.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Your head is full of blood, you have a headache, you don't know exactly what's happening, but you see your arms and everything's blurry, and your legs hanging down, and just below you, you see the arms of a giant were-whale. And then you fall.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Roll an athletics check to catch him. 21! 21, you are able to catch him without any damage, but you fall over 80 feet and land with a thud as you once again find yourself in the corner, prone with Ladle.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Sweet little boy, just have some cheese and go to sleep. Yes, your father, he was the emperor. Good night. That's exactly what I was getting at.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You feel your strange bucktuck body, and you're reaching deep down, and you're trying to lose concentration, or you're trying to turn it off. You're trying your bonus actions and your reactions, and yet, no matter where you go in your mind, or what magics you, you cannot turn this off. You are starting to feel like you're drying out a little bit.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Oh, you're right. I give you more. I shouldn't have confused them. Everyone pass their yellow cards.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You put the ring down. Silver wedding ring. Yeah, yeah, you sit down in the corner of one of the small elaborate tables that has been beautifully painted and it's the jewels.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You just get into your sarcophagi. There's that same droning yellow light in all directions. And you toss. And you turn, waiting for sleep to take you. About 15 minutes go by before you realize that you're not asleep. You cannot seem to get to bed.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Because then people might get what they... It needs to be three to the left for everyone. I think that's pretty funny.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
With 19, you pull that same drawer open that you found the initial snuff box within, and pushing away a few priceless trinkets and baubles, you are able to pull out It looks familiar to you, it's not black tar heroin, but this contains, and you unroll it, what is clearly, if mixed properly, the milk of the poppy.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Shuffle him in, and as you do, I need you both to make dexterity checks. Okay. To see how well you put him in there.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You both just throw him in there, and he hits the back of the sarcophagus, and it's enough of a jolt that his snuff box falls to the ground and scatters silver dust all over the place.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
What was that thing that you were known for that was just fucking epic? Everyone would have known about this. This was like your Chad Cake moment in your life, even though you were most of the time a noble and courageous and fearsome warrior, defender of the emperor. You also had...
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You have a stopper, and you have a small glass, and you're able to pull out as much of the liquid as you want, and then you're going to have to finesse the end of the drop.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You're completely alone with three unconscious silver dragonborn guardian warriors next to you, some in coffins and others just right there on the floor.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
other things, or perhaps even you were the fastest through training, or you were the youngest who graduated to become a Kingsguard, whatever you want to write.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You endeavor to, like, pull the milk of the poppy from the open wounds, and you get cut by the pieces of glass that enter your mouth, and you have this terrible sensation of tasting both this bitter, bitter blood, herbaceous and medicinal as it is, and the milk of the poppy all mixed together, and... You get high, but you don't go to flea.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Laziness. You are very awake. Jesus. You have destroyed the TV that was murmuring about the strange CD thing out of rage.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You have... An hour alone, a few more hours after that. How do you spend these first few hours of while your brothers are asleep in the land of poppies?
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
No, it can be any greatest achievement that your character, that you want to, yeah, yeah.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You can look up the ceiling. It's molded. You can't even see a seam around where it sits anymore, and you can barely see the draconic runes underneath that are sealing it away, hiding it from hopefully any intruders coming in. You look around, and aside from the damage that has been done by... Surprisingly, it's very own guardians.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
The ring that Artie put on a table, the drawer half open, emptying its contents for drugs, a few broken vases here and there from falling on top. There is a very quiet majesty about this place because it is indeed a treasure trove a place of Misery you're filled with a bit of awe as you look around and realize this may be the last bastion of your people Can't believe everyone's fucking asleep
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
A section does catch your eye. There are tomes in this place, but that's not of interest to you. There are weapons. That's interesting. You may be picking one up and doing some light training. Might fill the time. You put one back on the rack and you continue to walk around. When you reach a corner, you realize... There is history here.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
There is so much of the culture of your people here preserved in this way. That included fun. That included games. And looking down in this corner, you see that there are balls you recognize from specific games. You see that there are playing pieces, boards, there are gaming sets. on the surfaces of some of these tables.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
There are an almost infinite number of choices of the recreational activities that silver dragonborn such as yourself would partake in when they wanted to play with strategy, or have mindfulness, or just have entertainment. That is as important to your people as the other cultural objects that surround you.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You sit down on one side and you finally sit down and you realize you've bested yourself.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
This is a little quiet. I'm gonna turn this up a bit.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
I'll just keep playing catch with myself. You start throwing the ball, and what you can do is you can whip it forward and have it hit the opposite wall and get it to rebound back and attempt to catch it, and you do. And then you throw it, and you start to... Pass it back and forth, just passing the time, very reminiscent of Jack Nicholson's character in The Shining.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
And that paranoia starts to surge underneath you. You start to wonder if your brothers had perhaps left you here on purpose. What possible reason would Ladle have had to leave you in this space? He must have dropped the dropper by accident, and you're pushing this ball and pushing this ball.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Just another few inches would reach his heart for sure. You could do it with your pinky if you wanted to.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
With a 16, you... Trajectorize. And then you sort of pick a spot on the wall. You guesstimate how hard you need to throw it. And then you probably won't do it. And you whip it forward. And it hits against the wall with a bang and starts to bounce back and forth. And you're like, it's going to hit. You have done it.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
It's going to smash into that blade handle and dig it deep into the whale body of ladle. Oh, no, boss. Enough hours have passed that in this moment is when you all wake up. And Laedal, you jolt awake, only to feel the cold blade shoved into your ribs and into your heart as the ball bounces against the grip and sinks deep.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You feel your heart starting to stop beating or beat erratically. The two of you, eyes pop open. The milk of the poppy doesn't seem to hold for even eight hours. Only a few hours have passed for you, Laziness, and you are starting to bleed out, Ladle. I snap away.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Might he make a death-saving throw and make it public? 19. Oh. He's starting to stabilize.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
It's not hard to see with the thrashing of the bleeding out ladle that there's a broken bottle and dropper right next to it. No.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Make an investigation check and make another death savings throw.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
With a 16, you do find some Dracarion uppers, surely enough. You know that the effects of these can be pretty surreal to the mind, but that it may be his only chance.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
As soon as you're done, Rich will We're nearly finished. There's only one more step out for this, and then we can... Okay.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Laedal, you think you're going to be okay. It probably missed your heart.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You've lost some blood, but you know what? You're starting to come to, and it's in this moment that all of a sudden you feel a puncture, and right into your heart, for sure this time, you feel the syringe needle dig deep, and the plunger goes all the way to the base as you are filled with what is very obviously an adrenaline-slash-psychedelic... I'm thinking the drug from Dread.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
But you are stabilized. I would say that you've taken another eight points of damage, but the wound, wherever the bleeding would have happened, it can't because it's just sealed by lard as it closes disgustingly shut.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You look up at the rat hole and there's still a rope hanging from it. The hook never came free from the hole.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Nice. See? Easy money. Easy money. Last thing, and this can go on your character sheet...
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You start to turn and watch as Lael is clearly turning to tear the place apart. All right. You crash into one of the ceramic jars, and it's full of honeys and grains. You tear into the next one, and it crashes aside. Rupees fall out. Exactly right. The chickens start to attack you. No, you begin to, I need everyone to make a group investigation check.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
14. 14. 13. 13, 14. 16. And 16. Okay. You're all looking around and you're finding valuables, things that you are amazed you don't care about now. In such a short period of time, suddenly realizing the sort of strange fate that confronts you, what would have been a priceless artifact on a market, something that could have made you into a lord, is something that you toss aside
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Well, I would probably have a separate pile for when we get out of here.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
I'm very greedy. That's right. So whenever you find one of these priceless artifacts, you're like, oh, this is a nice little music box. And you'll set it in your sarcophagus.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You find that satisfying. The rest of you, it's the same story. books of histories that you know well enough. Maybe you'll reread them again and perhaps be illuminated by their mythological wisdom. But right now, you're looking for anything, any sign that could help you escape, any sign that could help you get out.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Sari, Masserer, you're drawn back to your perceived father figure, the emperor's crypt, and you put a hand on the surface of the stone now that he's been resealed into that tomb, and you take a moment, and then you realize that... There may be a button on the surface. Something that if you were to push this here and here, would perhaps unveil or reveal a secret chamber. Wait a minute.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Now let's roll for your names. We don't have to fight. We're gonna roll for your names. Oh my god.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
And you turn, and one wall that hadn't been as covered in goods and treasure starts to... crack right down the middle. You realize the seam is opening, and that it is glowing with these magic runes, and you realize that it is turning inwards. Two massive, tall, arched doors that suddenly start to push open and out.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
This is the secret chamber behind the burial chamber that reveals the true treasure of this empire. You stare through the portal, through the open way to a center room, a massive circular gate.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
It's just an hour and a half of this, which we're all fine with. Yeah, that was surprising. You can put this underneath your stat block, underneath your attack. You have a special move. And you're going to write this right on your character sheet. I'm telling you. I'm projecting. I'm foreshadowing. This is not getting passed around. This is what you get to choose for yourself.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
and you know that this is a portal, a portal to other worlds, that there's a mechanism that, should you enter the right symbols, the portal would be able to swoosh and sway and open, and you could perhaps take a ship into the stars themselves.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
To be clear, you're still in the chamber with the emperor. It's this long series of steps that takes you into this enormous additional room that's adjacent to the one that you're in, as big as an airport terminal. with a huge, for lack of a better word, stargate in the middle. Or if you're picturing the portal room in God of War. It's one of these open spaces where this treasure exists.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Now that you know your greatest achievement, what others know about you, your brothers, you have your characteristics, you have your name, now that you have this rounded character who definitely is a three-dimensional person in the fiction of this reality, You get to choose your special move. What is your special move that you do?
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
And you know that it takes powerful magics to run But that once you know the combination, you would be able to activate it and sail through, perhaps with one of the ships that you can even see that there are ships that can be guided through this gateway if you so chose.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You know, something we could read to potentially... There are shelves of books all around. Perhaps they could provide some guidance as to how to leverage the knowledge of this gate. All right.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Whoever's looking can make an investigation check.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Aww. You don't find anything lazy in this. Sorry, Masoner. You are... You find some books that are extremely pornographic if you get absorbed. But I will say, Artie, you pull the first book you pull off of the shelf. You flip it open, and it's got one of those cutouts, and there's like a bottle of booze inside. So you put that in your pocket.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
And then the second tome that you pull out, you pull it open. You start flipping through it. navigational charts, charts not of Drakkar. There do appear to be symbols in here that are beyond your understanding of the language of Dragonborn. What the fuck?
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
There's runes that seem impossible, and yet, when you look out, you can see those runes on the outskirts of the book with enough study of the gate. You can see them each all along the ring. With enough study, Perhaps this would offer you the secrets of activating the portal and taking you to one of the worlds described, other planes of existence, of beauty and of riches and of knowledge of magic.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You can pick whatever weapon you happen to be a master of, and you get to, oh, I'm the, you know, you can do some amazing spear attack, or you can do some unbelievable sword thing, purely for flavor. But this will be your big master move. It's your limit break of sorts. What is your limit break, to use the Final Fantasy VII parallel? Thanks for bearing with us, folks.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Surely enough... The old plus zero. Artie is exactly right. This will require study. This will require some time for you to backwards engineer it and make some guesses. You're gonna have to spend a little time with this tome in order to understand its contents, to even endeavor to enter the right sequence of symbols. Curses!
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
And to figure out what magic powers this thing, let alone take you to a plane of existence, based on some of the illustrations in the tome, the wrong choice could take you to not very nice places.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Your eyes continue to glow blue, and you are realizing that, with the exception of the brief period of unconsciousness that was afforded you by either trying to leave through the hole or by the milk of the poppy, you're not sleepy. Nor are you hungry. You feel sustained, not by undeath, but by the oath that bonded you to protect this place. And you start to read.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
How long do you, would you say, do you spend journeying to understand the mysteries of this book?
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
arguing with each other, and debate, and sometimes deviating and needing to play a game of dragon's chess in order to escape the conversation, just to get back to it. You, for Kingsguard, who should have been typed a unit of brotherhood and collaboration, struggle to reach an outcome, but by the end of those eight hours,
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Yeah, you think that you could punch in a sequence and probably get to a place that wouldn't be a horrible nightmare. It's gotta be. You're looking at this symbol and this symbol. Doesn't this have to mean you have a loose conclusion of what you could possibly endeavor to do? And if one of these ships does what it says so in this book, you should be able to fly there.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Are there ships in the area right now? There does appear to be a ship that can sail through this portal that's open. Oh, shit.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
His trusted guardians in life for decades. For most of your life in the military. And you had something you had to achieve and earn. You are the strongest warriors of the empire.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You do discover, by the way, about halfway through the eight-hour period, you go back to your box and you open it up, realizing that most of the silver dust has been replaced with sand.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
There's not much more drugs to find. You realize that you can, you've managed to save at the bottom of one of the broken bottle, you have one drop of poppy, and you have, even though you're going to have to huff a lot of sand with it, perhaps two more hits of the silver stuff, and that's it.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Yeah. Do we need to roll for it? Oh, to roll for it? Well, you haven't even walked up to the console, you are.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
The moment that a consensus is reached, Ladle stomps forward and crosses the threshold of this great gate. Don't drink the drugs. To enter the portal room. of magic. You can see the floating energies on the other side. You can see that as soon as you get there, you're going to be able to apply what knowledge you learned in this book and start to experiment.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
And as soon as Ladle crosses the threshold into that room, your body goes tingly and you fall asleep unconscious. No!
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You grab him by the ankles and pull in. Ladle, you quickly come back to consciousness, and the four of you realize that, yeah, you wouldn't be able to cross through this doorway and activate the console in the first place if you wanted to, bound to this place by your oath as you are.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
The creation process in real time.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Okay. I would say that you were killed instantly.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Snatched my neck. Yeah, it snaps your neck, you just crunch back, and you watch as your brother falls to the floor, having been dolphin-blown.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Well, I added to the creation process because I had a little bit more time. I knew that we would need to fill a little bit more time, so I fleshed things out a bit.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
And you immediately start to get consumed also killing But as you do you watch an amazement laziness as you see the body of Sorry as it vertebrae starts to reconnect and snap back together his head sinks back into place, and all of a sudden, you can see the undepth in his eyes, that same blue glow, uh, uh, uh, flare, and he comes back to life.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
It's already first of all realizing the situation that you're in you spend the next beating the shit out of each other we do a year passes
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
and you are falling apart your flesh uh your scales are shedding you are beginning to decompose slowly but you are indeed starting to realize that uh what meat matter on your bones is there is starting to sluice off your person how have you spent the last year trapped in this room together
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You found a huge collection of records in this space. All treasured, um... Time Life's Ultimate Love Songs collection. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You found music, you found audiobooks, you found it all. But it's been a year, and you probably have exhausted all of those songs. Each of you have heard these same tracks over and over and over again.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You run out of those drugs in the first week.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
There's nothing that can get you high anymore, and there hasn't been for 51 weeks.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Do we have to shit anymore? No, no, you haven't had to pass any kind of excrement or piss or anything like that since your transformation. Yeah, you had one last shit. But it's dried and mummified at this point. It's fossilized.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
You enjoyed that for perhaps six months until your dick falls off. Yeah.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
And there was some classic, there was like the equivalent of the Silver Dragonborn Kama Sutra. You know, but that was for you. It does nothing for me. No, no, no. If you find a monster tome, like how to find and fight yetis, and just the illustrations of like where their weak spots are, reminding you of Yemele. and you look in that fierce face and a cold tear runs down your face.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Captain Cheerful over here does seem to maintain a positive attitude even after all this time.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
After I have no dick. And if we had gotten to this point earlier, I would have forced you guys to in-character play Skull, but we're not going to do that because it's nearly midnight.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
What Laedal's done is he's taken some of the ceramic pots, like urns almost, and he's laid them out, and you are now bowling with the skull, the truly decayed and deteriorated skull of the Emperor.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Yeah, yeah. And it's like a bowling ball with a thumbs up. A bowling ball with glasses on. Yeah. Another year passes. And another year passes. Soon a decade has gone by. How do you know this? Only your gut tells you. Perhaps you do mark the time, occasionally coming back and being like, did I mark a day? How do you even tell what a day is?
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
Now that you've had some time to familiarize yourself with your characters, with your special moves, you have a deep understanding of who you are and what to call yourself, let's dig into the session proper.
Legends of Avantris
Icebound | Side Story 2 | A Story For Another Time
But every once in a while you walk over and perhaps you make a mark on the wall, these sorts of things.